Alisha+Ravi+-+Letter+of+Introduction

Dear Reader,

One of my biggest goals this year has been to create a strong community within my classroom. A place where students feel validated and welcome as they enter, and feel empowered and safe to learn. As we approach the end of the year, and I am beginning ot reflect on what I have and haven’t done, I realize that I really lost sight of this goal. Between periodic assessments, paper work, grading, and reading, I forgot to validate my students as people. This isn’t true for all my classes. I was lucky enough to have a class that facilitated this sense of community themselves, and created a community within the classroom. I take no credit for this. They put their minds to creating this kind of classroom, and they did.

This realization made me consider the huge importance of taking the time amidst crazy days to holistically reflect on practice. Had I caught this earlier in the year, I may have had more time to achieve this goal. As it stands right now, my students in the next school year will be the direct beneficiaries of my reflection. While this is unfortunate, that is the nature of reflection. We reflect to take the time to think about what went well, and what could have gone better. In teaching, this means what can we do with our next group to students to make this better.

This course has given me the opportunity to reflect in a way that it structured, and can even benefit my classes this year. The Point of Tension assignment showed me how my literacy history affects my teaching practice while the Linguistic Dimensions Study allowed me to reflect on my students, and how to make my lessons meet their needs. I look forward to continue employing these reflection practices to benefit each and every one of my students.

This portfolio goes through my progress through the course. It is organized based on the three essential questions, and includes assignments and readings that contributed to my knowledge of that question. I thank you for taking the time to peruse my work this semester. Sincerely, Alisha Ravi